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Ask HN: Should skipping the internet for a day result in police wellness check?
Given that most people access the internet every day, this seems like a reasonable thing to do.
- cinntaile 3y agoNo.
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoI guess you're coming from a country where the police are your friend?
- LorenDB 3y agoNo, because that would require linking online IDs to physical IDs and then explicitly tracking your activity, which would be a gross violation of user privacy, even under the guise of fighting crime. I'm not saying that law enforcement doesn't track users already like this, but if they do, it's likely targeting specific individuals known to be criminals that they want to capture.
- altdataseller 3y agoNo if anything the opposite. If you’re on the internet especially social media all day, you should do a mandatory wellness check
- mkl 3y agoThat sounds crazy to me. Even if someone was tracking people's private activity to that extent, it would almost always be a waste of police time to physically check on them after just one day of no internet use.
- gtirloni 3y agoYour mention of police will derail the conversation. I guess you could say family or social worker and people wouldn't be so against it. I think internet usage is a good signal these days. A smartwatch could be as effective.
- JohnFen 3y ago> I guess you could say family or social worker and people wouldn't be so against it. I'd be just as much against it.
- gtirloni 3y agoIf I were 90yo with health issues, I wouldn't.
- JohnFen 3y agoI think this is an important point. As posed, the question was about whether or not everyone should be subject to a wellness check just because they didn't log into something one day. I think that idea is ludicrous and potentially dangerous. The way these things should work is individualized. Presumably, the people in a person's life know their circumstances and usual habits, and would have a reasonable notion of when that person is throwing off red flags that indicate intervention is required. Being absent from the internet could be one of those red flags, but that's about the particular person, their situation, and their habits more than the internet. For example, I routinely go days at a time without being on the internet (or even contactable via cell), so my absence would and should alarm nobody. To say that being absent from the internet is a serious enough red flag so as to require intervention for everyone is nonsensical.
- LinuxBender 3y agoShould skipping the internet for a day result in police wellness check? Given that most people access the internet every day, this seems like a reasonable thing to do. No. The internet is and always will be optional for me at very least. Some people and some cities have made some things very convenient to the point where some people believe the internet is required but this is false and potentially risky should something cause an extended internet outage. I can see why some see otherwise especially in the EU where some cities have integrated the internet very tightly into peoples lives, never having experienced a disconnection from the internet since they were young. I am curious what would happen if some global event took down the power grid and internet for a few months or years such as a High Altitude Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse attack.
- navjack27 3y agoACAB! Absolutely not!
- chabes 3y agoAbsolutely not. Why anyone would consider such a thing reasonable is beyond me
- darkclouds 3y ago[dead]
- JohnFen 3y agoI don't understand why it should. How does not being online for a day indicate anything other than the person didn't want to be online, or was in one of the many areas where there is no internet connectivity? I'd be absolutely furious if cops knocked on my door just because I didn't log on somewhere.